Wars Our Fathers Fought
by The Libran Iniquity
Summary: Malcolm Reed learns some uncomfortable home truths about his father, and everything he believes to be right.


Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author Note: I wrote this back in January as a form of stress relief. Since then it's been poked, prodded and tweaked, all with the help of Drakcir, Sita Z and Exploded Pen. Huge thanks to the three of you! :)

Warnings: Set in the Mirror'verse.

* * *

"_All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."_

-- George Orwell, _Animal Farm_

o o o o o

On the sixteenth of April 2151, the Emperor of the Terran Empire publicly announced the existence of a rebellion within its borders and ranks. As admirals looked aghast and lower ranked officers began looking for traitors amongst their alien subordinates, the indentured workers of the Shi'Kahr refineries on Vulcan had developed a means of covertly communicating with the shipbuilders of the southern Andorian ice plains, who in turn had a long standing means of exchanging information with the predominantly Orion labour camps scattered across three systems. All of this under the noses of their Terran supervisors and masters.

It never crossed the collective minds of the Empire's top administration that any Terran could be involved in such a traitorous endeavour. Centuries of indoctrination and selective education had, in the public mind, ensured an almost fanatical patriotism that had only strengthened with the events of First Contact and the Empire's expansion into the stars. And there was no doubt that the rebellion would be a short lived affair, its proponents to be weeded out and executed with minimal disruption to expansion and consolidation.

Listening to the Emperor's address on loudspeaker on the bridge of the _ISS Enterprise_ - his new posting for the next five years (or the remainder of his life, whichever was shorter) - the newly promoted Major Malcolm Reed felt a knot form in his stomach, though he kept his expression bland and just the right flavour of dismayed and enraged.

He'd known this day would come.

o o o o o

"_It is not in the nature of the Terran to question his place in the natural order of things, nor to assume that he is anything less than to conquer and command that which he surveys. It is to this end that the very notion of true co-operative behaviour between Terrans and lesser species is, at best, a ludicrous concept."_

_-- _Dr. Harrison Tergl, Starfleet Journal of Anthropology_, January/2134_

o o o o o

_16 January 2130_

_Port Elizabeth, South Africa_

"May I speak with you, Father?"

Taking a moment to complete the last sentence on the screen in front of him and send the message, Stuart Reed nodded, and waved his hand to one of the ornate leather backed chairs in front of his desk.

Malcolm closed the study door behind him and scurried to the nearest chair, seating himself so fast as to almost want to hide himself, small creature that he was. Stuart waited patiently for the boy to speak, and when no such comment was forthcoming, he suppressed a sigh. "Yes, Malcolm?"

"I want to join the Starfleet Marines," Malcolm said quickly, but determinedly.

Stuart nodded, unable to refrain from a half smile. "You do realise they don't accept twelve year olds," he replied. "You'll have to wait a few years."

Smiling, Malcolm nodded fervently.

"So what brought this on?"

"Mister Suresh brought in a Starfleet commander to talk to everyone in class." _A recruitment drive. So young? _"He talked about the Empire's mission in space and how it was important for everyone to support _excon_."

Excon. The military abbreviation for the policy of expansion and consolidation had made it into widespread vernacular during Stuart's own youth.

"But I already knew that, of course," Malcolm finished a little proudly, looking straight into his father's eyes.

"Long live the Emperor," Stuart murmured. The words were by now a reflex, born of years of military service, and were simultaneously laden with meaning and devoid of it.

"Long live the Emperor!" Malcolm echoed enthusiastically. He waited for his father's nod before jumping down off his seat and moving for the study door. He opened it slightly, and beyond his son Stuart could see the dim, blinking light of the all-seeing passive surveillance and the housekeeper - the reluctant evidence that his wife was never coming back - transporting a laundry basket that threatened to dwarf her slender Andorian frame.

Malcolm flashed one last grin at his father before closing the door behind him.

Alone once more, Stuart turned back to his computer. It contained no device for surveillance of any kind, one of the perks of his former position, and for that he had occasion to be grateful. He took a moment to compose himself and opened a channel to the nearest Starfleet base.

Moments later the head and shoulders of a man with lieutenant's stripes appears on the screen. _"Good morning, sir,"_ he said. _"How may I be of assistance?"_

"I need a technician to repair some of the systems on my computer," Stuart told him. "Send over Specialist Soval; he's done competent work for me before."

"_Of course."_ The lieutenant inclined his head. _"I'll have someone escort the specialist over within the hour."_

o o o o o

"_Either war is obsolete, or men are."_

_-- _Buckminster Fuller

o o o o o

Earth was a haven of civility and honesty compared to the barracks at the Starfleet Marine Corps training centre on Luna. It had taken approximately two seconds for Malcolm to learn and assimilate this, and approximately five minutes to take in that the instructors did not approve of knives to the jugulars as means of solving petty disputes amongst the freshmen soldiers.

Not that the instructors were paragons of virtue either; the first time Malcolm actually came face to face with his commanding officer, the heavily scarred man looked him up and down. "You're Reed's son." It wasn't a question.

"I am." Malcolm held his chin steady.

The officer snorted. "You won't last two weeks. Be off with you before I put you out of your misery myself."

Taking the dismissive reaction as a challenge, Malcolm threw himself into training, quickly earning a reputation among the other cadets and enlisted personnel; he became a ruthless and cold-blooded soldier with a love of explosions and an interest in the mechanics of pain that bordered on scientific. His father's name had only ensured he wasn't weeded out of the initial intake - everything else he accomplished on his own.

Two weeks before the official graduation ceremony for the newest batch of Starfleet Marine officers (only twelve of them had made it this far, and scuttlebutt was only nine of them would be 'allowed' to enter active service), and eight months after he had been derided the first time for being his father's son, Malcolm received a recorded message from Earth.

It was another two days and a few strategically broken bones before he had opportunity to review the message. Hunched down in the cramped barracks he had used to share with seventeen other aspiring soldiers of the Empire, Malcolm inserted the data chip into the closest thing to a computer cadets were permitted access to.

The face that appeared on the screen belonged to his sister, though she was barely recognisable from premature ageing and the effects of childbirth. As with everything Madeleine had ever done, her message was terse, and to the point.

"_Malcolm. Father's dead."_

o o o o o

First Lieutenant Malcolm Reed was permitted, albeit with great reluctance by the Marine Chiefs of Staff, to attend his father's funeral. As befitted his former profession, and the fact that he had been able to retire almost intact, Stuart Reed had been granted a state funeral with full honours. Several high ranking Empire officials were present, and various Starfleet and Marine commanders that Malcolm recognised, or at least thought he remembered from his childhood.

The funeral concluded with Fleet Admiral Gardner extolling Stuart's patriotism to the Empire, and how his example would live on in subsequent generations, including his son – now there was a neon bulls-eye painted on Malcolm's ass if ever there was one. People began to mingle, discussing the late, great Reed in hushed tones. Malcolm ignored all of them, preferring to keep a watchful eye on any opportunist's seeking to use a retired officer's funeral as a political grandstand.

Instead he found himself cornered by his sister.

"Did you know people suspected Father of collaborating?" she asked bluntly.

At least she had the grace to keep her tone down. Malcolm could only stare at her, however. Some expression must have crossed his face because Madeleine sighed, and thrust a paperback into his hands.

"...Where are the children?" Malcolm eventually asked, regaining his composure as he spoke.

"Talas has them," Madeleine replied dismissively. "Their father would object, if he were around often enough to be able to." She cocked her head and regarded Malcolm for a moment. "The fire may not have been an accident."

And with that she left Malcolm standing alone in amidst people he did not know, clutching a paperback book, with nothing better to do in that moment than consider his sister's words. The fire that had engulfed the Reed residence in Port Elizabeth had left no forensic evidence in its remains; the only means of identifying Stuart Reed had been his dog tags and the duranium bone replacements in his left thigh and hip.

To Malcolm's recollection the investigators had been unable to identify the origin of the fire; only that it had swept through the house at an unprecedented rate and that his father had not suffered excessively in the minutes leading to his death.

He turned the book in his hands over. The faded text on the front read _"The Art of War"_; thumbing to the title page, Malcolm was able to make out an equally faded dedication from Lieutenant Colonel Robert S. Reed - his grandfather - to Stuart: _"Strength lies not in defence, but attack."_

Tucked inside the back of the book, in a hollowed out section of sealed paper, was a small data chip.

o o o o o

"_Ask not what your Empire can do for you, but what you can do for your Empire."_

-- Terran proverb

o o o o o

Malcolm had never waged a war so intense and unyielding as the one against himself when he learned what was on the data chip in the book that Madeleine had given him.

His first - and still the overriding – instinct was to hand it over to Starfleet Intelligence and be done with it. But then there was the fact that SI was a laughable concept at best, the organisation being little more than the acceptable face of judge, jury and execution squad - and Malcolm was under no illusion as to whose head would roll when _he_ was found to be in possession of evidence of _treason_.

Everyone knew the brutality capable by the Empire against its enemies, but as long as no direct references were made, the civilian people of Earth could remain proud in the continuation of _excon_ without being subject to its gorier details. Even less well known than the undocumented depravities were the existence of ideologies and beliefs that contradicted the Empire's propaganda machines.

Malcolm knew that collaboration between Terran and subhuman species was a ridiculous and unfeasible concept. At the same time he was in possession of _irrefutable evidence_ that his father had taken that very concept and practiced it, behind his family's back, behind Starfleet's back – behind the Empire's back for who knew how long?

Stuart Reed was one of the few Starfleet Marines to have survived in battle long enough to retire, granting his successor as Lieutenant General of the Corps the humiliation of following a _retiree_ into the position. The wheelchair that was his consolation prize in one last encounter against a Klingon warship notwithstanding, General Reed was _everything_ a citizen of the Empire should be, and Malcolm knew that he could potentially ruin the dead man's legacy with a few lines of encrypted data.

It could be the only way he'd ever emerge from under his father's shadow, despite the limited name he had made for himself thus far. If he could prove, or at least make a compelling case that one of the Empire's heroes had been murdered by the very aliens he had deluded himself into thinking he could help, then perhaps Malcolm could even come away from the affair with some glory and honour of his own.

But there was the sole counter-argument... this was his _father_. The man who had defied everything to take retirement so he could be around for his children after their mother had died. The man who had taught Malcolm everything he knew about patriotism, about honour and the art of war.

How could Malcolm decide between loyalty to his father, and loyalty to his Empire?

o o o o o

On the sixteenth of April 2151, the Emperor of the Terran Empire publicly announced the existence of a rebellion within its borders and ranks. From his position at the tactical station on the _ISS Enterprise_, the newly promoted Major Malcolm Reed - having only two days before dispatched his former commanding officer in a particularly elegant scenario that had only proved the man's incompetence - schooled his reaction to the rebellion to carefully mirror those around him.

On a shelf in his quarters, far from prying eyes, a battered paperback copy of _The Art of War_ sat wedged between a modified phase pistol and a box containing Stuart Reed's military dog tags.

o o o o o

"_These are not the wars our fathers fought."_

-- Excerpt from the personal journals of Lieutenant General Stuart Reed (retired.), entry undated


End file.
